Kenopsia
by theotherpianist
Summary: The City of New Phoenix has gone dark and the UNSC has scrambled Marines to investigate why. The first of a series of short story prompts. *Warning* This story is a little dark in theme and content.


_Greetings readers,  
_

 _If you're already a follower of my other Fanfiction in progress 'Halo: Rise of the Empire', I apologize for not giving you an update. This short story/prompt/challenge/*insert appropriate word here* is a literary experiment for myself. You may judge the result thereof._

 _The idea for this came out from a thing from the internet (where all great ideas come from of course) that was something to the effect of_ "20 words that described emotions you didn't know existed." _I've so far began writing something for each one of these words, this is merely the first. I would like to simultaneously encourage and challenge other authors to do something similar. These words are great words to know and they have the potential for a number of great things._

 _ **As a final Disclaimer:** This short story is (I think) considerably dark towards the end, keep that in mind. You have been warned. _

_SO, with this out of the way. I would invite you to sit back and grab some popcorn._

* * *

 **Kenopsia:**

(N.) The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but now is abandoned and quiet.

* * *

 _"Well Chad, what do you think of your first day? Only 12 years old and you're living with the best that Humanity can offer, little different than a cattle ranch don't you think?"_

 _A small child looked outside of their high-rise Apartment building into a world teeming with life. Everywhere he looked was something new to take in. Instead of a flat, green expanse, he saw a glittering expanse of buildings stretching higher than his mind could perceive. The cattle of his former farm on Mars were replaced with hundreds of people all clothed in bright colors and bustling around. The noise from outside was only a dim symphony filled with the roar of engines, the blaring of horns, but to the child it was glorious. Gone were the empty pastures of prairie going on beyond the horizon. Gone were the dull and empty hills. Everything was vibrant and breathing. An entity that invited him to come and partake in the vitality that the city offered.  
_

 _"I love it Dad."_

* * *

 **12 Years Later...**

The early morning stillness of the Sonoran desert's was shattered for a moment as a quartet of Pelicans roared by only a couple thousand feet above the ground racing underneath the threshold of the sound barrier. With an abrupt motion the two separated and pealed off to follow a ribbon of gray that led into the city beyond. The peace of the surrounding desert however was not shared by the occupants inside.

"Come on! Can't you get this junkpile there any faster?!" one of the occupants in the back asked for the eleventh time.

 _"If I hear you say something one more time I will open the back up and throw you out myself!"_ the Pilot snapped over the internal PA system.

"Remind me to kick his *** when we get back." a medic grunted from his seat.

"Has Gunny gotten anything else from the Brass?" another Marine asked.

"I don't know. Let's see." he triggered his helmet radio. "Second squad to First, do you read?"

 _"My reading list is a mile long Private."_ a gruffly spoken man on the other end of the comms said. _"What is it?"_

"Hey Gunny, you haven't gotten anything about what it is we're actually doing right?" the Marine asked slightly hopeful.

A harsh laugh was heard on the other end.

 _"Sergeant, the day the military revises its policy of keeping us in the dark, I'll retire and write a novel. We should be reaching the boundaries of the city in several minutes get yourselves ready. First squad out."_

The connection closed.

"Right. So I guess we're in the dark." the Marine confirmed.

"We heard the conversation sir." the Medic said irritated.

The Fourth Marine spoke up from his spot in the blood tray before the first or second could speak.

"I don't know about you but either this is the worst prank ever pulled or something is seriously wrong."

"What was your first hint Chad? The orange light? The base being put on high alert? The rumors of a nuclear explosion in space? The city's Superintendent declaring a Level 5 Emergency? Or was it the fact that they're sending three squads to New Phoenix with no other reinforcements behind us?"

"All of the above I guess." murmured Chad. "You know, I grew up in New Phoenix, haven't been there since I joined up. Wonder how much has changed. Shame if anything happened to it." He said nothing else but the others all nodded.

 _"We're nearing the city. I'm going to throw up a live-feed of our approach. Something's not right."_ their Pilot announced a little more sullen and a lot less irritated.

A live feed of the city appeared in the center of the blood tray where the 360 degree camera mounted underneath took in video of the surrounding area.

"Looks like early morning rush hour." The medic commented

"That's a lot of cars on the road." the first marine observed.

"Number of accidents on the road too." The second one added.

They all looked to where he pointed. The Pelican was flying over one of the major interstate highways that ran all the way to Southern California with a surprising number of cars crunched into each other or scattered off the road. The rest of the traffic was in various stages of changing lanes.

"What on Earth?" the Medic asked looking at the scene.

"You know it was probably an EMP." the second marine said. "If there was a nuke that went off in orbit, it could have been low enough as to disable this area. All the cars and electronics are probably fried because nobody really hardens their equipment."

"You're sure being optimistic Geoffrey." the medic commented.

In the distance the megalopolis of New Phoenix began to take shape and a few high rise buildings on the outskirts emerged from a haze of light smoke.

"Alright, how do you explain that Geoffrey?" the Medic asked.

"It's simple Kirk, A number of systems probably blew up when the EMP hit. If there were any cars moving fast enough without sufficient power steering, they would have crashed causing more than a few fires, same goes for any birds up in the air. They all probably fell out of the sky."

"****." Kirk said as he realized the magnitude of event Geoffrey was describing."

"The same also goes for fire suppression systems. Any ongoing fires wouldn't have been able to be extinguished from the automated fire systems as those were all electric."

"Hang on a second Kirk," Chad asked confused. "Aren't all major emergency systems supposed to be shielded from this sort of thing? And most of our warbirds have some sort of hardening against EMP and the like, right? How do you explain Fort New Phoenix's lack of communication?"

A silence fell on the blood tray.

 _"It looks like the lights are still on."_ their pilot chimed in from the cockpit.

They approached the city ever closer and saw in one of the skyscrapers on the fringe that they were clearly all lit. The sight was slightly disturbing.

 _"Second squad, third squad, this is First Squad. We have orders to secure the city, I have secured additional reinforcements who are en route right now. We're heading for the Government District. Second and Third squads, land in the Chandler plaza and set up a Command Post. From there, second squad will take the Financial District, and third Squad will take the Arts District."_

 _"But Gunny,_ " one of the members of Third Squad protested, _that's a huge area."_

 _"That's why I called for reinforcements. We have no idea what the situation is on the ground so be ready for anything from Insurrectionists to Covenant. First squad out."_

 _"Adjusting our course. Hang on to our seats."_ their pilot announced from the front seat.

"Oh man. Chandler Plaza is a great place to people watch. We used to visit our extended family up here all the time. If this mess settles down I'll need to introduce you guys to my brother's cafe. He makes a mean Moa burger and he'll cut us a deal since I know you guys." Chad said trying to break some of the tension.

"****! A moa burger? Do you know how expensive those things are now?" Kirk asked.

"You serious? I haven't had one of those in ages." Geoffrey asked eagerly.

The holographic image died and the Pelican banked to the right and began flying over a major road artery towards the Financial District for about two minutes.

 _"Where the **** is everybody?"_ their Pilot asked.

"How close to dropoff?" Chad asked not wanting to dwell on his words.

 _"Thirty Seconds."_

"Get ready Marines!" the Sergeant ordered.

The Pelicans started dropping rapidly until they stopped suddenly. and the back exit ramp flipped open.

"Go go go! Private Malcolm, you have point!"

Chad ran out flanked by all the others with weapons spread out. Almost as soon as they exited they dropped their weapons. There was no need of them here.

The city was _completely empty._

The only sound came from the wind, hot, course, dry, making a hissing rasp as it flowed through the rows of massive monolithic buildings. Nearby the wind ran through a twisted metal and glass sculpture that gave off an ethereal wailing sound. Other than that, the city sat completely still much like the Sonoran desert they passed over earlier. Chandler Plaza was completely devoid of human life and activity, a gray lifeless desert of pavement, concrete, steel, and glass.

There wasn't so much as a bird in the sky.

He turned his head towards the road. He cast his mind back to the first day he experienced the city. There should have been a symphony of vehicle horns adding their voices to the ambulances, fire trucks, police cars, aircraft, and throngs of people. Now the buses were overturned on one side, the emergency vehicles nowhere to be found, and the cars stopped haphazardly all over the road. The only time he had seen a city like this was in the aftermath of a Covenant Invasion, albeit with much more going on around it.

"It's a **** ghost town." Kirk muttered.

Chad's attention was diverted elsewhere and he stopped paying attention to what was going around him's eyes caught sight of a shiny cafe on the other side of Chandler Plaza surrounded with metals chairs and tables.

"Hey! Chad?" Geoffrey called out from behind him.

Chad ignored him and began moving at a faster gait as a memory of that building surfaced.

* * *

 _"Alright bro, close your eyes. I'm going to put a blindfold on you."_

 _Chad did so and winced as a strip of cloth was tied around his eyes a little harder than he would have preferred._

 _"Is this REALLY necessary Chris?" Chad asked his older brother as he began to walk. His foot collided with a chair and he almost fell._

 _"It's totally necessary!" Chris laughed. "Here, grab my arm and I'll make sure you don't trip over any more chairs."_

* * *

"Corporal! What are you doing? Stand down!"

Chad began sprinting to the building slowly increasing in size as he crossed the empty expanse. He heard from behind his squad begin to sprint after him still carrying all their gear. A knot welled up in his throat and it became hard to breathe as he got ever closer to the building.

 _"No, it couldn't be..."_

* * *

 _"Alright bro. Open your eyes."_

 _He did so and a bright red storefront appeared in his vision. The inside was packed with people, and a holographic sign above read:_ **Have S'Moa!** _complete with an image of the smiling alien bird from Reach._

 _"No way!" Chad laughed. "You did this?"_

 _"You like?"_

 _"**** yeah I do!"_

 _Chad turned to his brother who had shed his jacket revealing a black apron with the bird emblazoned upon it._

 _"When did this happen?"_

 _"Oh, about a month ago. I got tired of working for some of the local places and I thought maybe I could do better than them."_

 _Chad watched as a car pulled out of a parking lot that clearly did not have any places for parking._

 _"Business as you can see is good!"_

 _"Holy crap dude! You finally did it!"_

 _"Mmhmm. Come on Chad, first three burgers are on me today. Then you can tell me about boot camp."  
_

* * *

With a final burst of effort Chad ran across an empty four lane road past two semi's, an elephant heavy transport vehicle, several wrecked cars, across the filled parking lot, and into the inside of Have S'Moa. The first thing he noticed was a massive amount of smoke followed by the smell of burning meat.

He vaulted across the counter to the ovens that his brother had frequented so much and turned off everything that was currently cooking food. He grabbed a fire extinguisher and hosed down the cooktops with the fire retardant foam putting out the fire and sat down shocked. The lights were on, the PA system was playing music, and there was nobody in sight. The sight of a steaming burger on one table untouched by everything else haunted him the most.

The doors from behind him burst open as Second Squad finally caught up to him.

"**** it Chad! You pull something like that again and I'll have you scrubbing the toilets with-" the Sergeant stopped. "This was the place you talked about on the Pelican...wasn't it."

Chad gave a shaky nod.

"****. Fire must have been going pretty good." Kirk said pointing his rifle around him. "Look at all the ash."

Kirk's mention of the ash suddenly brought it to his attention. There was ash everywhere. How did he miss it? There were a couple of piles behind the counters where he was standing, but more piles of it sitting underneath the tables, the metal mesh chairs...

 _"Second squad, third squad, this First Squad, you hear me?"_ the Gunnery Sergeant suddenly broke their silence.

"We read you." their Sergeant said.

 _"Third squad reads you Five by Five. There's a lot of ash on the ground where we are."  
_

 _"Check it with medical scanners... scan for human identity."_ the voice broke for a moment before recomposing itself.

 _"What?"_ Third Squad asked.

 _"You heard me. Report back when you've done so."_

"Has the Gunny gone mad?" Geoffrey asked.

"Better do as he says." Kirk grumbled pulling out his medical scanner from a holster on his thigh.

He powered it up and began scanning a pile of ash.

"No... this can't be right." Kirk said after a moment.

"What is it?"

"This thing says it's human, or what's left of one."

A huge invisible force hit Chad broadside.

 _Human?_

"No...that thing's wrong." Chad said weakly.

"What drug are you on Private Graft?" their Sergeant snapped angrily.

"No drug sir!" Kirk responded immediately.

"Then you scan it again!"

Kirk held out his scanner over a different pile.

"Well?" the Sergeant demanded.

"Human male, 34 years old, deceased." Kirk said hollowly.

"This can't be right. What could turn everybody in here to ash?"

"A Halo ring could...sir.." Geoffrey added with some hesitation."

"Shouldn't we all be dead then?" Chad said coming over and looking at Kirk's scanner for himself. The readout on the screen seemed so impossible

"Maybe the Covenant used some sort of localized halo on a small scale?" Geoffrey said trying to justify his idea.

"You're sure it's human?" the Sergeant said. The question seemed so trivial and so calloused that nobody wanted to answer immediately.

"Hold on, it makes sense though! Look at where they're positioned!" Geoffrey said rising with every word.

"Holy ****..." Kirk swore as they all looked around and observed where the ashes stood.

"Chad, go check outside in the cars, if there's ash in the driver's seat..." the Sergeant's voice broke.

Chad moved without thinking, too numb to comprehend events at the moment. He staggered outside and looked through the first car he came to. He peered into the driver's seat of a minivan and vaguely felt sick when he saw a pile of ash in the driver's seat and two smaller piles in car seats. The next car was empty, but two more on the road in front of him had ash piles sitting in the driver's seat. He looked back towards Have S'Moa at the outdoor seating under bright red umbrellas that shaded from the increasingly hot sun.

It was then that he caught sight of it waving eerily in the wind that picked up again, a ghostly shroud.

Hanging off one of the chairs was Chris's apron.

He ran over to it and picked it up. It stank of oil, grease, and most strongly, ash. Most disturbing was two handprints on the side. Like he had just stepped out, wiped wet hands on his apron, and taken it off. With shaky motions he stepped back and looked down at what had been and let out a howl. The sound echoed around the city for a moment before the ghosts swallowed it up and carried it off.

He shook the apron and was momentarily surprised when a chatter fell out. He picked it up and realized that it was still unlocked and...recording?

He almost dropped the device but gingerly held it in his hand and stopped the recording and went back to viewing it.

"Corporal, you out here?"

"You guys need to see this." Chad said brokenly.

Again the city swallowed up any noise that they made.

Within a second his squad was surrounding him.

 _He pressed play._

The recording started immediately focused on the sky.

 _"Alright, it's early in the morning here in New Phoenix and there's this weird thing in the sky right now. You can barely see it but it just showed up twenty minutes ago and there's all the bright flashes of light."_ Chris narrated.

The camera zoomed in and the blurred outline of a huge oval in the sky was lit by miniature flashes of orange and yellow. In the background several other people were recording the event or talking in the background.

 _"Is it the Covenant?"_ a woman asked.

 _"No it can't be." Chris said unsure. "Covenant shapes aren't that ovular right?"_

 _"Well the light flashes have stopped." another man said. "Maybe we won?"_

 _"Or we lost!" said a fourth. "Oh ****! It's just like the Covenant invasion all over again!"_

 _The camera panned down to a man dressed for the heat holding his breakfast in one hand._

 _"Hey hey! Remain calm! I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation."_

 _"No man." he said shaking his hands and backing out. "I'm getting the **** out of here!"_

 _His reaction was prompting several others to panic as well."_

Another 20 minutes passed before anything of interest happened.

A flash of yellow orange split the sky with an alien shriek and Chad's attention was riveted to the screen.

 _"It's the Covenant! They're glassing us again!" the fourth man yelled._

Pandemonium broke out as bystanders began to flee in terror. Chris angled the camera down to where the beam struck, far off on the other side of the city.

A bus blocked out his view for a second before it swerved and crashed into a car in the opposing lane.

The beam started moving his direction.

"Chris move!" Chad yelled realizing how futile it was to yell at the recording.

The beam started moving closer and closer picking up with intensity as it approached.

The camera panned down and zoomed in on the other side of the plaza as people began flooding it by the thousands.

 _"Oh no."_ Chris said terrified. But still he remained rooted to the spot.

The beam suddenly swept through after them but instead of blasting everything to slag and glass, the beam caught people and they began disintegrating before their eyes. Far behind a car plowed through the intersection nearly hitting people and vehicles alike before slamming into something else off camera.

 _"I'm getting out of here!" Chris said backing away. He tripped over a chair and fell down and picked himself up again. The beam was almost right on top of him. The camera turned to him. The whine was now drowning out everything._

 _"Screw this, I'm outta here!"_

 _He dropped the apron and chatter on the chair. They heard the beam getting louder and louder and suddenly it was right on top of the camera. Then it was moving away farther and farther. The whine persisted for several more minutes until it inexplicably stopped suddenly.  
_

 _The symphony of car alarms and sirens stopped one by one leaving the city as quiet as it was now._

Chad tasted bile and put the phone down trembling.

"How many people lived..." Kirk stopped unable to finish the question.

"7 Million." Chad answered the question.

The Sergeant began offering a prayer and the men began crying.

The wind gusted again and this time in Chad's mind it echoed with the screams of ghost and it stank of ash. An entire city wiped away in an instant leaving giant monolithic structures as cold tombstones. The hot desert wind felt suddenly very suffocating, and the blood began to pulse in Chad and a wave of rage taller than the skyscrapers around him consumed his soul.

He would kill the Covenant responsible slowly and painfully for this genocide of a new kind. He would not stop until every single last one of them were dead.

"We need to move." someone said. He did not care who. Nothing mattered anymore, not while the city of ghosts cried out in anguish with every

He grabbed the apron and carefully picked it up letting it flow with the wind as ghosts from the city brushed it aside.

* * *

 _Well that was slightly dark, was it not? I tried to base it loosely on the brief cinematic we get of New Phoenix. I don't know whether Chad will make any additional appearances in other works of mine, but we'll see what happens._

 _Reviews are wonderful!_

 ** _-theotherpianist_**


End file.
